Malechallengemedia's Blog

When I arrived back in Australia in 2007 I was appalled by the violence on our streets and neighborhoods.

The following are headlines collected from the Sydney morning Herald and the Brisbane Courier Mail

1. Each weekend, Australian cities like Sydney are littered with unconscious, vomiting and fighting young drunks. Binge drinking by young Australians has reached frightening levels, say police and hospital staff who struggle to stem the violence and are left to repair the wounds of victims. “We are becoming a much more violent, aggressive society. We are becoming intolerant of anything that annoys us … and hence road rage, parking rage, trolley rage at the supermarket,” says Dr Gordon Fulde, head of the emergency department at St Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney. “We are assaulting people more viciously. The violence is very, very nasty. Weapons are also involved now and the closest weapon when drinking is a glass or bottle,” says Fulde, who treats bloodied victims of drunken fights each weekend.
2. QLD STATE Education Minister Rod Welford has blasted parents for failing to socially educate their children and has ordered teachers to pick up the slack – today’s teenagers were the most “under-parented generation in our history” and dramatic changes were needed to stem bullying, drug and alcohol abuse, depression and other youth behavioural problems.
3. With the new school year just over a week away, Mr Welford has vowed to push on with a package of reforms – a move supported by the State Government’s Youth Violence Taskforce. The taskforce was set up in 2006 following the bashing death of Brisbane schoolboy Matthew Stanley at a birthday party.
4. Part of the taskforce’s recommendations included calling on the Education Department to “investigate a range of social and emotional learning packages with a view to having all Queensland state schools deliver a package from Prep through to Year 12 to encourage positive behaviour and social skills in children and young people”.
5. Shocking rise in kid crime THEY are only children but Queensland’s pint-sized criminals have been charged with more than 16,000 offences in 12 months. The revelations come as two boys aged 11 and 16 faced Southport Children’s Court yesterday for allegedly bashing an off-duty police officer and his girlfriend at Coolangatta.
6. QUEENSLAND children are getting into serious trouble at record levels, with the number before higher courts rising nearly 20 per cent in 2006-07.
7. Street crims less abusive than Gen Y – Vic police commissioner
8. POLICE need help to control a generation of young people who lack discipline because they have been given “free rein”, according to Queensland’s new Opposition police spokesman.
9. Drunken youths marred Australia Day celebrations on the Gold and Sunshine coasts on Saturday, brawling with and throwing bottles at police attempting to move them on.

10.  AFL star Wayne Carey headbutted a partition in a Miami police car after he was arrested for assaulting his girlfriend and officers in the US city last year.

11.  Violent youth gangs take control of streets – August 02, 2008 12:00am – DRIVE-by beatings and random ‘swarming’ attacks by teens armed with knives and poles are leaving a bloody trail across southeast Queensland

12.  BINGE drinking is being blamed for a dramatic increase in alcohol-related harm among young people.

13.  Youths account for about a fifth of Victoria’s population, yet they are our No.1 offender group. It’s a trend that is being mirrored in many other countries, Adrian Tame reports

14.  MINDLESS violence is becoming a fact of life for the young in our schools and suburbs as knife-wielding, pre-pubescent thugs terrorise pupils, teachers and paren

15.  Alarming rise in teen abuse of parents TEENAGE children are bashing and bullying their parents at an increasing rate, in a largely hidden form of abuse that can arise from violent role models or overindulgent parenting.

16.  Greg Bird , glassing violence

17.  Sam Newman actions were personally insulting to Wilson but grossly offensive to all women, and have implications for the AFL as well as for Newman’s employers at Channel Nine.

18.  ONE of Brisbane’s trendiest bars has banned footballers after becoming fed up with the trouble high-profile players have caused.

19.  Broncos’ latest controversial night on the town

20.  Executive director of the Australian Drug Foundation John Rogerson, said the binge-drinking athletes, particularly rugby league players, needed to be challenged by administrators.

21.  Broncos – Darren Lockyer admits to tackling Casablanca bar manager

22.  UP to 22 students a day are suspended from a school in Brisbane’s south which can’t cope with soaring levels of violent and extreme behaviour.

23.  ONE in every three boys believes it is acceptable to hit girls and many children are routinely exposed to domestic violence, according to a disturbing survey. The unprecedented survey of violence and attitudes shows one third of boys believe “it’s not a big deal to hit a girl”. One in seven thought “it’s OK to make a girl have sex with you if she was flirting”. The survey also shows one in four teenagers lives with violence at home, prompting calls for domestic violence education programs in schools. The study, which reviewed data from the past seven years, including a survey of 5000 12 to 20-year-olds, found up to 350,000 girls aged between 12 and 20 – one in seven – had experienced sexual assault or rape. Almost one third of girls in Year 10 had experienced unwanted sex.

24.  The survey, “An Assault on Our Future: The impact of violence on young people and their relationships” is released today by the White Ribbon Foundation, which campaigns to end violence against women.

25.  Violence scars kids: new study A quarter of 12 to 20-year-olds have seen an act of physical violence between their parents or step-parents, a new report says.

26.  GENERATION of Australian teenagers has been lost to binge drinking and will not be reached by the Federal Government’s anti-drinking campaign, one of Australia’s leading drug educators warns. Paul Dillon, the director of the private consultancy Drug and Alcohol Research and Training Australia, said the $53 million National Binge Drinking Strategy was having little effect on a generation of young drinkers habitually misusing alcohol. Emergency wards remain busy. Alcohol sales have held steady.

27.  Among a generation of young women who find empowerment in pole-dancing classes, drinking alcohol, and having sex “like a man”, are those who are getting really nasty. Raunch culture is becoming violent, and girl power is expressed by fighting “like a man”. Today it seems there are more physically confronting women than ever before, slapping, punching and smashing glasses into faces “like a man”.

28.  Prep students suspended for violent behaviour. OUT-OF-CONTROL four and five-year-olds are being suspended from Prep classes in a crackdown on school violence involving attacks on teachers. Education authorities say they have been forced to suspend the pint-sized problem pupils to protect teachers from being kicked, bitten and hit. The students also have thrown objects and assaulted classmates.

29.  Concerns over the role of binge drinking and the role of alcohol in our culture are clearly on the mark. But another part of the problem is an underlying cultural endorsement of the use of violence to resolve conflict, to settle differences, as well as to inform others of the importance of the tough guy role. Such endorsement is not only played out in and around nightclubs and parties. It occurs every weekend on our football fields, regularly on our highways when road rage escalates, and even in our workplaces.

30.  Woman charged over glass attack -April 12, 2009 – 10:10AM A woman has been charged after allegedly attacking a man with a glass at a Sydney pub, leaving him with injuries to his face and eye.

31.  Teachers subject to harrowing attacks by students – Tanya Chilcott May 18, 2009 TEACHERS are being terrorised by students who have assaulted them with bricks, furniture, threatened with death, spat on and held hostage. A shocking list of assaults and harrowing attacks by students on teachers since January last year has been supplied to The Courier-Mail. The list of assaults, provided by the Queensland Teachers Union, shows teachers are bearing the brunt of a current wave of violence in state schools.

32.  Olmpian Nathan Baggaley Final fall from grace: Olympian jailed over drug ring

33.  RISING violence in schools is being fuelled by parents not spending time with their children and valuing independence above discipline, child experts warn. Allowing violent video games and television to become babysitters is also being blamed. It follows the admission by the State Government last week that violence continues to rise in classrooms, with suspensions reaching shocking levels in some schools. Queensland’s Education Minister Geoff Wilson and Queensland Teachers’ Union president Steve Ryan said the rising violence was mirroring society, with schools not solely to blame.

34.  Toughest principal gets results on school violence A CABOOLTURE high school principal’s zero tolerance approach to violent and unruly student behaviour has had amazing results.